By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 4 -- What is the UN doing in Cote d'Ivoire and whom is it protecting? After forces of Laurent Gbagbo raided the offices of the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, Inner City Press asked the UN to confirm whether one or four people had been killed, and to state where other that the Golf Hotel is it protecting, even just in Abidjan.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky, who earlier spoke about the ONUCI Mission's “patrols,” replied that UN peacekeepers had “sought to gain access but it was not yet possible.”
Inner City Press asked whether the UN was purporting to protect offices of opposition political parties, or by implication their officials.
“The focus is the Golf Hotel,” Nesirky said. As the UN says when civilians are slaughtered or raped in Eastern Congo, he said UN peacekeepers “can't be everywhere all the time.” Here we're talking about a foreseeable attack on an opposition politicial party's office right in Abidjan. The UN couldn't be there?
Outside the UN Security Council, Inner City Press learned that the Council will in all probability have consultations on Cote d'Ivoire on January 5. “We're still consulting” a source told Inner City Press, “but it looks like it will be tomorrow.
At the noon briefing, Nesirky added that he would “defer to [his] colleagues in the Mission” to provide further answers. Video here, from Minute 22:22.
Nesirky, who is the spokesman not only for Ban Ki-moon but for the UN Secretariat, which includes UN peacekeeping missions, increasingly engages in this passing of the buck. In just the past ten days, he has told Inner City Press to go ask the UN Mission in Kosovo about a UN judge who let an organ theft defendant go free.
Most recently Nesirky has told to go ask MINUSTAH in Haiti how much the UN pays an official. We'll have more on that one, and the others. Watch this site.
